My calling

Day before I turned 18, our class went to a valedictory Mass in a township outside Brits. I asked its name and was told merely that it was "oukassie" the old location. Anyway all the Catholic Matrics were there and I had the msot amazing day. You must understand that this was in 1979. Whites and blacks simply never socialized!

Anyway while playing football in the school grounds I saw a brother in a tree beside the church. He was throwing seeds at us! It was at that moment when I felt inside me a deep peace and at the same time a deep burning. A knowledge came to me then. That I must spend my life working among the poor and in places like this.

Within 12 weeks of that day I was in the South African Army. By the time I awolled from the SADF two years later, I had decided to become a social worker. Much happened while studying Social Work. I left South Africa for nine years of exile and returned again to settle in Pretoria in 1995. My wife Andy and my son, Benjamin made a small family unit.

In 1999 while managing Emerging Market Services, Andrew Ball phoned me and asked me to find out why REST 4 REAL spza shop was selling so much custard. The shop was in Mmakau, about 40 km west of Silverton.

I paid a visit. The owner said that on Sundays people come down from that church on the hill and buy tins of peaches and custard for Sunday lunch. The church on the hill was a new one and I asked what denomination it was. Catholic I was told.

I decided to go up the hill and investigate. As I drove in the driveway of the school I realized that this was the place where 20 years ago i had received that strange calling...

I fell to my knees and cried out loud at the sheer amazing power of this calling and its Originator. Twenty years later without planning or forethought, I was doing the very thing in the very same township where I had been told to start my life work.